HYDERABAD: The wheat farmers are complaining of suffering financial loss as the official wheat procurement centres and gunny bags distributions has allegedly been deliberately delayed.
The farmers' representatives claim that while the wheat harvest in southern Sindh had completed by around half of the cultivate crop, the gunny bags are yet to reach in the farmers hands.
"In Mirpurkhas region's districts over 50 percent of the standing wheat crop has been harvested but the government buying of the crop hasn't started," alleged Zulfiqar Yousfani, vice President of Sindh Abadgar Board.
He lamented that owing the official delay, the middlemen in the open market were exploiting the wheat farmers by paying them lower than the government fixed rate.
"The official price is although Rs1,300, the open market buyers pay as low as Rs1,100 per 40 kilogram," he claimed.
The Board's President Abdul Majeed Nizmani said even though the Sindh government had assured that the center would be opened and the procurement would start from March 21, the holidays leading to the weekend had delayed the process.
"We hope that the process would start from the next working week. Any further delay would only increase the financial losses of the wheat farmers," he said.
Meanwhile, the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, a separate lobbying group of the farmers, called for increasing the official procurement target from 11 million tons to 13 million tons.
The SCA's President Dr Nadeem Qamar argued that the 11 million target was disproportionately lower than what the government was supposed to buy from the farmers in view of the total wheat crop harvest in Sindh.
Maqsood Siddiqui, Food Controller of Hyderabad district, informed that 25,000 bags of 40 kg would be purchased from the farmers in Hyderabad district alone.
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